Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/235

Rh metaphysician chipping the human mind, studying its curious laws,—psychology, logic, ontology; here is a merchant, a mechanic, a poet, each diligently using his intellectual gift; and as they acquire the power to think, by so much more do they hold intellectual communion with the thought of God, their finite mind communing with the Infinite. My active power of understanding, imagination, reason, is the measure of my intellectual communion with Him.

A man strives to know the everlasting right, to keep a conscience void of all offence; his inward eye is pure and single; all is true to the Eternal Right. His moral powers continually expand, and by so much more does he hold communion with his God. As far as it can see, his finite conscience reads in the book the Eternal Right of God. A man's power of conscience is the measure of his moral communion with the Infinite.

I repress my animal self-love, I learn to be well-tempered, disinterested, benevolent, friendly to a few, and philanthropic unto all; my heart is ten times greater than ten years ago. To him that hath shall be given according to the quantity and quality of what he has, and I communicate with God so much the more. The greatness of my heart is the measure of my affectional communion with Him.

I cultivate the religious faculty within me, keeping my soul as active as my sense; I quicken my consciousness of the dear God; I learn to reverence and trust and love, seeking to keep his every rule of conduct for my sense and soul; I make my soul some ten times larger than it was, and just as I enhance its quantity and quality, so much the more do I religiously commune with God. The power of my religious sense is the measure of my communion with my Father. I feed on this, and all the more I take, the more I grow, and still the more I need.

In all this there is nothing miraculous, nothing mysterious, nothing strange. From his mother's breast it is the largest child that takes the most.

At first a man's spiritual communion is very little, is most exceeding small; but in normal life it becomes more and more continually. Some of you, grown men, can doubtless remember your religious experience when you were children. A very little manna was food enough for